Archive for September 19, 2010

In what we hope will be a regular feature on the Avalon.ph blog, we are doing a series of blog post profiling some of our customers. Our very first Featured Customer is Louella Suque. She’s an Avalon.ph customer for more than a year now and is happy to share with us her thoughts about her book collection.

– What is your most memorable purchase/s on the website and why?

My most memorable purchases would have to be my acquisition of hard-to-find books such as TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, Sylvia Plath’s Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams and Anne Sexton’s poetry paperback. Avalon.ph has all these great, hard-to-find titles and I’ll admit to going insane each time I browse through the books up for sale. As a matter of fact, at one point, I ended up buying 12 books in one go.

– Share with us your adventures in reading, discovery of new authors and the evolution of your interests:

My mom, from the time I could properly read, made sure that I read classics. The first novel I read from cover to cover was Charles Dicken’s Oliver Twist, at age 8. My interest evolved from adventure classics such as Tom Sawyer and Dr Doolittle to Sylvia Plath’s poetry and then a bit of Irvine Welsh by the time I reached high school. It is an endless desire to learn and discover. I read not just for the sake of education but more for leisure.

– What is in your collection?

Of course, being the Sylvia Plath enthusiast that I am, I have every single Plath book in my collection. I also love JD Salinger and I have all of his books including not just one but three copies of The Catcher in the Rye, counting a vintage copy from 1951, a gift from a friend who found it in an antic shop.

I also love Jack Kerouac and am looking forward to exploring the works of other Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs.

– Which books currently in stock on the website do you highly recommend?

A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein. I always believe that picture books are also written to be enjoyed even by those pass the age of twelve. Shel Silverstein’s poetry is humorous, clever and witty. His books are a great escape from the ho-hums of a dull weekend afternoon or a pleasing way to conclude a chaotic work day.

– Name one author that people should start reading. Why?

Reading Vladimir Nabokov means intellectual orgasm. If all the other writers have only one selected word, adjective or a single cliché metaphor to describe, for instance, the experience of eating an apple or kissing a girl, Nabokov has multitudes. Reading him is not just an intellectual exercise but a pleasurable awakening of one’s mind’s eye.

– Your taste in music and books. Any connections?

I have always loved the likes of Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Tori Amos and Fiona Apple. Radiohead and Pearl Jam, I seem to personally associate with a JD Salinger piece or even a Hemingway or a Palahniuk: the bites of realism and sting of sarcasm is there. I always imagine Sylvia Plath listening to Tori Amos the whole day. Plath and Amos, female artists, tackle feministic issues in their own chosen art forms: music and poetry.

– Lastly, share with us a favorite quote from any of your favorite books.

“He is ugly and sad… but he is all love.” — Gabriel García Márquez (Love in the Time of Cholera)

– Thank you very much Louella!

Louella, a Multimedia Arts major, is a creative writer, one time independent filmmaker and an active cultural worker for cinema. She also collect coffee cups since she was in high school.

The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold (Hardbound)
Skin and Other Stories by Roald Dahl
Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella
Queen of Babble in the Big City by Meg Cabot (Hardbound)
The Danzig Trilogy by Gunter Grass (Hardbound 3-in-1)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (Hardbound)
Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire
The Taint and Other Novellas: A Cthulhu Mythos Collection by Brian Lumley
Ernest Hemingway: The Short Stories (HB, Scribner)
The Chronicle of Malus Darkblade Vol. 1 (Warhammer Anthology)
The Winner Stands Alone by Paulo Coelho (Hardbound)
The Stories & Fables of Ambrose Bierce (1977, Hard-to-find)
Vampire Stories (MR James, Anne Rice, Robert Bloch/ HB)
Last Call by Tim Powers (Winner of the World Fantasy Award)
Sideways in Crime: New Alternate History Science Fiction
Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker (Hardbound)
Three Rotten Eggs by Gregory Maguire (HB, Hamlet Chronicles)
The Pearl (Naughty 19th Century Erotica)
The Faber Book of Madness
Drood by Dan Simmons (Hardbound)
Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson
The Best American Erotica 2006 (Edited by Susie Bright)
The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
The Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca
Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda (Bilingual)
The New American Splendor Anthology: From Off the Streets of Cleveland

Non-fiction:

The Science of Stephen King by Lois H. Gresh & Robert Weinberg
Lists for Life by Rory Tahari
Asian Cinema: A Field Guide by Tom Vick
Turning Back the Clock by Umberto Eco
Fairy Tales: A New History by Ruth B. Bottigheimer
The Five People You Meet in Hell (Parody, HB)
Escher on Escher: Exploring the Infinite
Bobby Flay’s Bold American Food (HB)
Bill Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words (Hardbound)
The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism
Calligraphy School: A Step-by-Step Guide… (HB)
French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano (HB)
Doctor Who: A Celebration (Hardbound, 1983)
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: A Casebook (Edited by Ellen Pifer)
The Triumph of Practice over Theory in Ethics by James P. Sterba
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (HB)
Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book
The Obvious: All You Need to Know in Business. Period. (HB)
Mathematics for the Imagination by Peter M. Higgins (Oxford)
Pocket Book of Survival by Rob Beattie
The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of the Perfect Dinner by Jay Rayner
The Murder Casebook: Classic Accounts of Famous Modern Crimes
The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes by Roger Wilkes
Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre

Carl Javier has been an Avalon.ph customer and friend for almost ten years. He writes fiction, nonfiction, and criticism. His first book was And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth, a collection of essays about being a geek and the crazy experiences that come with that. His upcoming book, The Kobayashi Maru of Love, is going to be launched on Sept. 6 (launch details in the poster image below).

Here’s a short e-mail interview with Carl.

Avalon.ph: So what exactly is The Kobayashi Maru of Love?

Carl: The Kobayashi Maru was the test that no one was meant to pass in Star Trek. I recently went through a bad break up and I thought, if there’s something that geeks are supposed to be bad at, it’s the whole love game. So I decided to write a book about the breakup and then getting back into the dating scene. But it’s fun and funny and playful, despite it being about some sad stuff.

Avalon.ph: Is this book that’s just for geeks, or for everybody?

Carl: I think that geeks will appreciate it because of the references and I really tried to play around with stuff that geeks love. And much like my first book, I tried to write it so that it’s about geeky stuff, but it’s something that I think anyone can appreciate it. Plus, I think writing about love, whether geeky or not, makes it something that might appeal to just about anyone.

Avalon.ph: Describe the journey of this book from idea to print. Which part is the hardest?

Carl: I was taking my break up very hard and I found myself writing about it. Then I decided to just write about all the stuff I was going through, and before I knew it I had written enough to fill up a book. Then I tried to find a publisher for it, before coming to the idea of self-publishing it. I worked with my friend Adam David, who designed the book and helped me through the process, since he self-published his first book (and won a big time award for it too!) The hardest part was really finding the money that would fund the publication. Writing it was hard, emotionally because I was really putting it all out there. But turning it into a book was a real struggle because at the same time I was learning how to be an indie publisher. It was a very exciting experience, and I hope it shows in the book when people read it.

Carl Javier is finishing his MA in Creative Writing at UP Diliman, where he received his undergraduate degree in English Studies major in Creative Writing. He was a fellow for the UP National Writer’s Workshop, the Dumaguete National Writer’s Workshop, and the UP Advanced National Writer’s Workshop. His work has been published and anthologized in various books and publications. His first book, And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth, was published by Milflores in 2009. His next book Geek Tragedies will be published by UP Press.